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It was a time of hoop skirts and sock-hops, drive-in theaters and rock and roll. The
economy was booming, children were being born at an alarming rate, and a hero from World
War II was comfortably ensconced in the White House. Yet, while most of the country was
busy cheering for the red, white and blue, one Senator in particular had reduced that
color scheme considerably: Joseph McCarthy was only seeing red.
"Thousands and thousands of Americans destroyed in those years, political casualties,
historical casualties...But I don't remember anybody else being brought down quite the way
that Ira was. It wasn't on the great American battlefield he would himself have chosen for
his destruction. Maybe, despite ideology, politics, and history, a genuine catastrophe is
always personal bathos at the core. Life can't be impugned for any failure to trivialize
people. You have to take your hat off to life for the techniques at its disposal to strip
a man of his significance and empty him totally of his pride."
The "Ira" in question is Ira Ringold, a radio theater actor, friend of Nathan
Zuckerman and brother to Nathan's high school English teacher, Murray Ringold. Ira is a
big, bruising man who got his break playing Abe Lincoln for local school programs and
union rallies. The story of Ira's rise and fall comes to us through the reminiscences of
Nathan and Murray over the course of six nights of conversation. Roth allows his
storytellers the benefit of hindsight, and a country in political conflict proves a worthy
stage on which this drama is played out.
Passionate and idealistic, Ira and a group of fellow actors and writers work on a radio
show called The Free And The Brave. Ira marries former silent movie star Eve Frame, and
they attain some degree of success when Eve joins the cast. As the personal politics of
the group begin to creep into the scripts, unsavory rumors start to circulate. In the wake
of similar controversies, people are being called before the newly formed House
Un-American Activities Committee to discuss their questionable political motivations.
"Lists. Lists of names and accusations and charges. Everybody...has a list. Red
Channels. Joe McCarthy. The VFW. The HUAC. The American Legion. The Catholic magazines.
The Hearst newspapers...Lists of anybody in America who has ever been disgruntled about
anything or criticized anything or protested anything...all of them now Communists or
fronting for Communists or 'helping' Communists or contributing to Communist 'coffers,' or
'infiltrating' labor or government or education or Hollywood or the theater or radio and
TV...All forces of reaction swapping names and mistaking names and linking names together
to prove the existence or a mammoth conspiracy that does not exist."
Ira and Eve's life together suffers from more than the political upheaval going on around
them. Ira despises Sylphid, Eve's daughter from a previous marriage. Sylphid is a whining,
opportunistic young woman who rules her mother with an iron fist. Eve lacks the backbone
to stand up to her daughter, and the stormy relationship between Ira and Sylphid leads to
even further complications.
Betrayal is a word that crept into everyday use during the Red scare, and it is betrayal
that finally does Ira in. Not betrayal of his country, as the rumors would suggest, but
betrayal of his marriage. When Eve finds out that Ira has been having an affair, her first
impulse is to seek revenge. She does just that in a tell-all book,
co-written by two political up-and-comers, entitled I MARRIED A COMMUNIST. The book and
the events that follow its publication ruin Ira's career, but Eve, too, is sullied in the
morass.
I MARRIED A COMMUNIST is a wonderful novel, full of heart and soul. Using the broad canvas
of a troubled decade on which to paint the portrait of one man's fate, Roth has never been
more compelling. His later works show a greater sensitivity to those around him. Always
one to confront his own inner demons, Roth's focus now incorporates the bigger picture and
the reader is the benefactor. Roth --- using Zuckerman as his mouthpiece --- gives us a
clue as to the path which brought him from a young writer to this place and time:
"Occasionally now, looking back, I think of my life as one long speech that I've been
listening to. The rhetoric is sometimes original, sometimes pleasurable, sometimes
pasteboard crap (the speech of the incognito), sometimes maniacal, sometimes
matter-of-fact, and sometimes like the sharp prick of a needle, and I have been hearing it
for as long as I can remember...whatever the reason, the book of my life is a book of
voices. When I ask myself how I arrived at where I am, the answer surprises me:
'Listening'...was I from the beginning...merely an ear in search of a word?"
--- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner
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